Bill Heffernan (NSW, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the report of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee on the administration by the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry of the citrus canker outbreak, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I seek leave to move a motion in relation to the report.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

The citrus canker outbreak, which the grows and flows committee—better known as the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee—investigated, came to our attention three years after the alleged illegal importation of, among other things, citrus cuttings into Emerald by a farming organisation up there which has refused to cooperate with the inquiry and the principals of which will probably never come back to Australia, and if they do they should get locked up.

This is a great wake-up call for Australia. It is a wake-up call for all the people who were given the supervision of not only the allegations of illegal importation but the consequent outbreak of citrus canker. The committee are pretty concerned about the way this was all handled—and that is not by any particular government but by all governments. Political persuasion should not be an issue in this. This is about protecting Australia’s clean, green and free image. This has been a serious breach of that process. When the first allegations of illegal importation were made, which was a red line call on 12 June 2001—three years before the citrus canker was discovered in Emerald—AQIS took six weeks to obtain a search warrant and to ask the Queensland state agency to be involved. We think that is pathetic.

Witnesses who had not spoken to AQIS—sometimes, we think, because AQIS did not make a concerted effort to speak to them—made information available to this committee. I heard about this and thought, ‘Shivers’—I suppose that would be a better word to use in this chamber—‘we ought to have a look at this.’ There was some resistance to our having a look at what happened in 2001 as opposed to the outbreak in subsequent years. So I thought, ‘What would be the first thing you would do if you wanted to investigate what happened in 2001?’ I thought the first bloke you would ring would be the farm manager, so I rang the farm manager and, lo and behold, he had not been formally interviewed by the investigating authorities. I thought that was pretty peculiar. So I thought perhaps I should talk to the chief compliance officer, who was supposed to do the investigation. I rang him directly and got into a bit of trouble for doing it, because I did not go through the various official channels.

Then the committee raised a few questions in estimates—as I recall, Senator O’Brien—and we pulled on this investigation. The further we went into the investigation the more disappointed the committee became. If ever there was a wake-up call needed for Australia, AQIS and the intergovernmental arrangements it is this. This was a serious Dad-and-Dave operation, and the consequences are the complete devastation of the district.

Perhaps the biggest single failure was that AQIS did not execute the search warrant. AQIS officers failed to investigate what was in a locked room. Everyone could give us evidence about this locked room, and everyone on the farm gave evidence that the dodgy material that was allegedly imported was kept in this room. When the investigators from AQIS got there they were told the door was locked, but instead of doing what I would have done, which is kick the door down—they said there was no key available—they just left it. They went away. They said, ‘There’s no key; we won’t bother having a look.’ Had something being done at that early stage—and there is no evidence that citrus canker was then present—the disease may never have been brought into Emerald.

The committee is equally concerned that the AQIS plant inspectors were given the task during the period of quarantine of inspecting the property of 20,000 acres. The lady concerned gave evidence to the committee. I think I said to her, ‘You were given a mission impossible,’ and she agreed. How can two people in one day inspect 20,000 acres for citrus canker? Also not helping was the fact that the manager of the property said he did not even know what citrus canker looked like until he was in a plane one day and saw a pamphlet in the pocket of the seat in front of him and thought, ‘Oh my God, that’s what we’ve got back at home on the farm.’

I am pretty unimpressed with all of this. I appreciate the cooperation we have had from the Queensland government et cetera since this all happened, but it is a bit late after the event. The committee has made some recommendations, and I am sure other members of the committee are anxious to speak on this report, so I had better not take too much time. The committee urges AQIS to bring more resources to bear early in the piece, to make sure that quarantine measures can be taken before a disease such as this spreads. For the record, the impact of the citrus canker outbreak was not limited to a few citrus growers in Emerald; 490,000 citrus trees had to be destroyed in the area. Every citrus tree, including every backyard, orchard and local tree, had to go under. An area that was generating revenue of up to $70.8 million per year was virtually wiped out overnight.

In my view, AQIS’s conduct of the investigation was not up to standard, to say the least, and those responsible for importing the disease into Australia have never been identified. We have a better than 90 per cent idea of who we are talking about and how they did it. We took some evidence and there was some influencing of witnesses, but whether it was incorrectly influencing or not we will never know. But it seems pretty certain how it all happened, and what gives me and the committee the heebie-jeebies is that they appear to have gotten away with it. The committee is very concerned that, based on AQIS’s performance, this is a sad episode. We think there are some serious lessons to be learnt from this.

There is also the issue of whistleblowers being protected. Mr Wayne Gillies was one of the people who were poorly handled. There was another witness, who gave evidence in camera, who had a nervous breakdown because he felt that he had to do the right thing by the country and ruin his own career in doing so. There is a lot of pressure in small places to shut your mouth and turn the other way. We think that a lot of work has got to be done to protect whistleblowers so we can protect Australia’s clean, green and free image. The whole thing was a disgrace, and I am very saddened by it.

Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to follow on and expand on some of the points that Senator Heffernan made on the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee’s inquiry into the citrus canker outbreak. The inquiry was set up in May 2005 to examine in more detail a number of serious issues and allegations relating to the outbreak of citrus canker in the Emerald district of Queensland. Those issues were raised by me, Senator Heffernan and others during the 2004-05 additional estimates and the 2005-06 budget estimates hearings.

These were very serious allegations and issues that go right to the heart of how this government, and especially its quarantine service, AQIS, fulfils its key role of policing our borders to keep out exotic pests and diseases that may threaten important agricultural industries. The issues and allegations also go to how effectively and quickly the government, through AQIS, responds when it is provided with information about possible serious breaches of Australia’s quarantine laws. The terms of reference allowed the committee to examine these important issues and also to look at other areas, such as the cooperation between the Commonwealth and the states in dealing with the canker outbreak, the impact on our citrus industry of the outbreak and how future incursions should be managed.

In June 2004—and I think it is important to put the history on the record—an employee of Evergreen Farms in Emerald sent a sample of material from a mandarin tree that he suspected of being infected with citrus canker to the Queensland Department of Primary Industry for testing. Within four days, the Queensland department had confirmed that the sample was indeed infected with citrus canker and set in motion an emergency response process under the provisions of Plant Plan. The outbreak had a significant impact on citrus growers in the Emerald district and in Queensland generally, as a blanket ban was put on the shipment of Queensland citrus products to interstate markets at the very peak of the 2004 season. And, as Senator Heffernan has said, around half a million citrus trees in the Emerald district were destroyed. The economy of the whole Emerald district suffered, as did the families who rely on the citrus industry for employment.

It was six months after confirmation of the outbreak that both the Commonwealth and the Queensland governments announced assistance packages and then compensation packages. A number of witnesses presented evidence to the committee about the timeliness and effectiveness of the response by governments to this disease emergency. The committee has taken those concerns on board and has recommended that Plant Health Australia reviews the operation of both the national management group and the Consultative Committee on Emergency Plant Pests to improve their performances.

I want to turn to a number of very concerning issues and allegations that were raised at the inquiry and during a number of estimates hearings. The allegations—they have been touched upon by Senator Heffernan—related to a previous incident at Evergreen Farms, the property where citrus canker was discovered in 2004. My concerns go to how the government, through AQIS, dealt with those allegations.

On 12 June 2001, an employee of Evergreen Farms, Mr Wayne Gillies, made a telephone call to the AQIS Redline number alleging that the owners of Evergreen Farms had been involved in smuggling plant cuttings into Australia. Mr Gillies told AQIS that the owners of Evergreen Farms had illegally imported citrus, grape and lychee cuttings, as well as paw-paw and melon seeds, into this country. Over the next few weeks, AQIS officers took a formal statement from Mr Gillies and made a number of routine checks on permits held by Evergreen Farms and on the travel movements of the owners and others associated with the property. However, it was not until the morning of 23 July 2001 that AQIS executed a search warrant on Evergreen Farms. That was, as Senator Heffernan said, a full six weeks after Mr Gillies made his call to the AQIS Redline number.

There is considerable disagreement between the AQIS version of what happened during that search and the version provided to the committee by other witnesses, who were former employees of Evergreen Farms. While AQIS officers claim to have interviewed all available employees on that day, the employees themselves claim that they were either not interviewed or that any interviews that did occur were cursory at best. However, it is clear that only a small portion of the farm was actually searched and—again, as Senator Heffernan said—that a locked room, believed by AQIS compliance officers to possibly be a repository of illegally imported material, was not searched at all, despite the officers having the power to force entry to that room. Testing of the material taken from the farms during the raid did not show the presence of citrus canker but did show the presence of two other citrus diseases, one of which, importantly, was exotic to Australia. Evidence was given of the lack of cooperation by the owners of the farm with attempts by AQIS to manage the quarantine risks they had identified or suspected existed on the property.

Several witnesses were very critical of aspects of the AQIS investigation, and particularly about a perceived lack of vigour in the pursuit of allegations that in the year 2000 one of the owners on Evergreen Farms, Mr Cea, had directed employees to plant bud wood of very doubtful provenance. Subsequently, AQIS entered into a confidential deed of arrangement with the owners for ongoing monitoring of quarantine risks on the property. Under that agreement, the scope of monitoring of the property was quite limited and, in fact, only four inspections took place. Evidence was given that the confidential deed was a unique arrangement and was used in this case because AQIS was dealing with a particularly uncooperative and litigious property owner. The confidential nature of the agreement was of real concern to other citrus growers and grower organisations as well as other members of the Emerald community.

The 2004 citrus canker outbreak clearly demonstrated the sort of impact an exotic pest or disease can have on an important industry and on a community. There are lessons to be learnt, particularly from how government responded to the outbreak in terms of its performance during incursion emergencies. But it is on the government’s response to the 2001 allegations that the most serious concerns are raised. That response should be characterised as slow, timid and lacking rigour. There were concerns about the lack of protection given by governments to quarantine whistleblowers, without whom none of these events would ever have seen the light of day. I strongly urge the government to carefully read the report and to craft a response that deals with the serious issues it raises. I commend the report. I urge the government to carefully consider its recommendations. I thank the committee secretariat and the members of the committee for their work, and I sincerely hope that the work on this matter does not end here.

Jeannie Ferris (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Heffernan and Senator O’Brien have quite eloquently gone through the detail of the report, and I do not propose to do so again. Suffice it to say that we have many debates in this chamber about terrorism and, to me, the canker outbreak was a form of bioterrorism. The citrus canker disease was deliberately brought into a particular region of Queensland. It had the effect of destroying an industry, hundreds of people’s livelihoods and families. It even took out people’s citrus trees in the backyards of their suburban homes. If this was not bioterrorism by an individual or a group of individuals then I do not know what it was.

I have to say—and I am very sad to say it—that this citrus canker issue was very poorly handled by AQIS. It is inconceivable to me—and it will come as no surprise when I say it in this chamber, because I said it to AQIS on several occasions—that when AQIS got a call from a very courageous person on their hotline it was six weeks before anything was done to investigate it and, curiously, when the investigation did take place, there were people who already knew that it was going to occur. It was a complete failure of process. It was a failure right from the very start. It was a failure when the man rang the hotline. It was taped, but nothing was done to check it out for six weeks.

We have recommended in our report today that it be three days—and three days is the absolute maximum. If we are going to have an incursion into this country, either of a plant or an animal, it should be a matter of hours, not days, after a hotline call comes before action is taken. We have had discussions about this in this place and in our committee before. This is not the first time. Senator Heffernan has outlined the potential difficulty we had with a possible incursion of foot and mouth when we had some beef come in from Brazil. So this is not the first time that AQIS has miserably failed the Australian community on incursions and on a very expensive structure that is in place to make sure that this country stays clean and green.

AQIS failed the people of Emerald, they failed the families and, most of all, they failed the citrus industry. It will be years before this industry recovers, and many of the significant growers in that region of Emerald will never recover. They will never re-enter the industry. It is a great tragedy to me that through AQIS’s laziness and failure to take adequate action, the incursion got away and, unfortunately, no matter how hard we tried, we were not able to bring any person to justice over this. I think that upsets me more than anything else—that, when all was said and done, we had no opportunity to effectively recommend action through the DPP. That was because a number of witnesses, having given evidence, were then, in some curious way, prevailed upon to change their evidence. We had a situation where conflicting evidence was given by crucial witnesses, to an extent that we were not able to make recommendations to the DPP.

However, we have made five recommendations here. They are very significant recommendations which have been covered by both Senator O’Brien and Senator Heffernan. I will not go over them again now, because I know that Senator Milne wants to make a contribution. However, on this issue we want to stop AQIS from having all the power, because they have shown on this particular occasion—and on several other occasions, I am sorry to say—that the power should not rest only with them. Recommendation 4, which suggests ‘that twice a year, the Commonwealth Ombudsman review all investigations carried out by AQIS to assess whether they have been conducted by appropriately trained staff, in a timely manner, in accordance with all the relevant legislation and according to the rules’, has been undertaken. I for one will be pushing very hard to make sure that the minister accepts that recommendation.

We also want to make sure that in the future, when properties are visited with a warrant, the search warrant is properly executed and locked doors do not remain locked with material perhaps behind them. We have suggested that on those particular occasions when we do require a full inspection of a property there should be outsiders from the state where the incursion may have occurred involved in the execution of that warrant. This is a very important issue. This is bioterrorism in its most basic form. It destroyed an industry, it took out millions of dollars worth of product and it destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Queenslanders.

Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the remarks made by my colleagues from the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee. I concur that it is a good report and that this committee worked extremely hard to try to get to the bottom of what occurred leading up to the citrus canker outbreak in Queensland and also what occurred subsequent to that. I feel, as my colleagues on the committee feel, that it is extremely disappointing that we were not able to bring recommendations to the DPP that action be taken because, as Senator Ferris and others have said, it is quite clear that there was a calculated breach of quarantine. But saying it and proving it are two different things, and this committee was unable to prove it. As Senator O’Brien, and no doubt Senator Heffernan before him, indicated, the problems go back to 2001, and by the time the committee got to investigating this it was too late. People had forgotten details and, in some cases, were not absolutely sure about what had happened.

Given the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry say that even the most stringent quarantine and biosecurity measures will not prevent calculated, deliberate smugglers from breaching quarantine—and that might be the case—I think AQIS needs to double its efforts and get a lot stronger in recognising that there are unscrupulous people who will try this on and will try it on in a calculated manner, because the penalty for doing so is merely a fine, and the advantages of doing so, in terms of avoiding all of the procedures to get plant stock, animals et cetera approved, are such that they are prepared to run the risk. I do not think it is good enough, so I thoroughly endorse the recommendations of this report.

Going to specific details, one of the things I was concerned about throughout this committee inquiry, and I remain concerned about, is the ability or willingness of AQIS to quarantine a property. One of the issues was whether the disease they think is there is on one of the schedules to the act. So I would have liked to have seen in this report a recommendation that AQIS can quarantine a property if they have reasonable doubt about whether whatever disease they see there is present or has been previously present in Australia.

AQIS are saying that they have adequate powers to do that. I hope that is the case. I will expect in future that, if that is the case, they will act on those powers. The reason I say that is that, with climate change, we are finding that habitat ranges for disease are significantly changing. Whereas before you might not expect to find a particular overseas disease in certain parts of Australia, you will now find it because of a significant shift in habitat. If we do not have it on the schedule of prohibited diseases, I want to make sure that AQIS can still quarantine the property. That is a really important issue to me. I think climate change is going to significantly shift the ground and make a whole lot of things a threat to Australia that previously we may not have recognised as such.

The other thing is the changes in and the mobility of populations. One of the allegations that came up in this report was that the owner of a property had brought in workers from another property that he owned in the Philippines. The workers came into Australia on a tourist visa. So they came straight off a farm in the Philippines, landed in Australia and went straight onto a farm in Queensland. That poses huge quarantine threats, unless people admit on the customs form that they have been on a farm in the previous few days and that their shoes et cetera are looked at for soil and all of the associated identification that AQIS would take if they knew that.

That is why this report says clearly that there should be a closer relationship between AQIS and the Customs Service. I think we should have on the customs form not only ‘Have you been on a farm in the last month or six weeks or whatever?’ but also ‘Do you intend to work in the rural community or on a farm in Australia within a month of your arrival?’ That way, you could have a cross-check between AQIS and the Customs Service in relation to these itinerant workers. I do think that is going to be an increasing problem in Australia with regard to this particular matter.

One of the issues that concerns me around this whole investigation was the failure to have proper police procedures in place. I could not believe the fact that when the whistleblower’s house was broken into the police were not called. Even though the whistleblower rang AQIS and said, ‘The house has been broken into and taken from my computer was material that pertains to where we believe this illegal stock is,’ the police were not called to investigate and there was no fingerprinting done. It beggars belief that that did not occur. Also, when one of the critical witnesses—again the whistleblower—was interviewed again by the AQIS investigator, the whole issue of proof of evidence was not done properly. I cannot believe that. That is why I am strongly supporting the view that officers of the Australian Federal Police be involved in training a special compliance and investigations unit of AQIS so that AQIS do have proper investigative powers and so they know how to conduct these investigations in a way that will stand up in court. It is essential that that occurs.

I think we are being naive as a nation if we do not realise that there are going to be unscrupulous people coming into Australia who either own or work on properties, who want to circumvent increasingly stringent quarantine laws. If they do that, there needs to be an adequate punishment regime, an adequate investigation capacity and a legal framework that gives AQIS the powers they need to deal with these circumstances.

I regret, for the sake of the people in Emerald, that this committee was not able to get to the bottom of this whole issue about not only the citrus canker but also the citrus tristeza virus. Had AQIS quarantined the property because of suspected citrus tristeza virus, we might have found out then the provenance of that virus and whether indeed it came from China. If we had been able to establish that, we would have been a lot further down the track in 2001. I do regret our inability to bring anybody to justice as a result of a recommendation to the DPP, and I want to reassure all of the people in Emerald affected by this that this committee tried as hard as it could to get to the bottom of it and we had as many hearings as were necessary. I am pleased with the report and I hope that the government will implement the findings of this inquiry. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.